________________
173
extremely helpless. A young elephant who came there to drink water saw your miserable plight and decided to settle his old scores with you. You had once beaten him badly and driven him out of your herd. He rushed at you and struck with his sharp tusks. You experienced great pain, developed high fever and afte seven days of great agony you died. You were hundred and twenty years then. Your next birth was also as an elephant, this time at the foot of the mount Vindhya. You were very tall, as tall as seven hands, and extremely beautiful. You soon enough became the leader of your herd of seven hundred elephants. You were known as Meruprabha. You enjoyed sexual pleasure to your satisfaction. A fire broke out during summer and the whole forest was caught up in it. Birds and animals ran here and there in search of shelter but hardly any one survived. When you saw this fire, and the miserable condition of the birds and animals in the forest, y
irds and animals in the forest, you suddenly remembered that you had seen all this before. With this sudden recollection, of your experience in the earlier life time, you attained the knowledge called jātismarana. You felt great compassion for the helpless fellow creatures of the forest and decided that you should create a permanent shelter for the animals from fire. So you made a Mandala, prepared a large patch of ground circular in shape from which everything that might catch fire was carefully weeded out. You and your herd of elephants worked at it during three rainy seasons and assured your selves that it afforded every possible security from fire.
One summer, a fire did break out and you along with your herd drove every one towards the Mandala for safety. All animals forgetting their natural enmity crowded up in the Mandala. When you were also taking your place in that crowd, you wanted to scratch your head. So you lifted your foot and while putting it back on the ground, you saw a little rabbit that had come there for shelter. You could easily see that if you were to put your foot down, it would crush the poor rabbit. You felt terribly constrained to do so and out of sheer compassion, you kept on holding the foot up, putting yourself to the inconvenience of standing only on your three legs. When the fire burnt down and all the animals started leaving, the position became easy for yourself as well as for the rabbit. You held
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
